


Scars Heal

by knight_bus_of_doom



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Soulmates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-25
Updated: 2019-02-25
Packaged: 2019-11-05 13:33:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,684
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17919767
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/knight_bus_of_doom/pseuds/knight_bus_of_doom
Summary: In a world where soulmates gain each other's scars, Harry Potter walks around with the most famous scar of all.Draco Malfoy walks around with very carefully arranged bangs.





	Scars Heal

**Author's Note:**

> Someone said "Hey, what if there were soulscars in Harry Potter?" and then this happened.

Harry Potter thought about soulmates, of course. How could he not, when everyone was looking for their scars on others, and he had the most distinctive scar of all?

It was in the dark in the boys dormitory, in first year, that he learned about soulscars. Hushed whispers from five 11-year-old boys, telling stories about their parents and older siblings. Mostly hoping it never happened to them — girls were dumb and gross, after all. 

It was in third year that he first heard of the “scarhead” phenomenon. People carving a lightning bolt into their foreheads, hoping to catch his eye. Grown witches carving them on their newborn babies, in an effort to convince doctors. There were often age gaps between soulmates, after all, though 13 years was a bit much. It took a first year, Rosalind Cleaver, cutting too deep and passing out in the bathroom in a pool of blood, for Dumbledore to make an announcement that Madame Pomfrey had the medical records of all students and no, they were not stupid. Even so, Harry sometimes caught a glimpse of a ragged red line on someone’s forehead, their bangs held back in a clip so it was even more obvious. 

It made him sick, he told Ron, that people would hurt themselves just to get his attention. It made Malfoy sick, the Slytherin said as he walked by, to have to pay any attention to Potter at all, if he could kindly get the hell out of his way, Draco was walking to class here. Ron had to be held back and dragged around the corner.

It was in fourth year, over holiday break, that he got more of those strange circular scars on his arm, the ones he had been collecting since he was little and didn’t know what they were. Hermione and Ron, staying over Christmas break for him, realized what he hadn’t for years. They were burns. Cigarettes, said Hermione. Scorching Charm, said Ron. They told the same story either way. For weeks, Harry thought about the abuse he himself had suffered, trying not to be grateful to the Dursleys that they had never done anything like that to him, wondering who might be walking by him with scars like that.

It was the summer after fifth year, in Ron’s tiny attic bedroom, when he felt his skin prickling and changing on his arm, but this time, it didn’t stop, and it was in a different place. On the inside of his forearm was a large scar, stretching the whole length. It wasn’t mottled skin, like the burns, but simply…changed. Harry spent the rest of the night tracing it silently, wondering what it could be. Outlining the shape for the ten thousandth time, his eyes widened as he remembered something, something that scarred the inside of a left forearm, left it, and the person, changed forever. In the morning he shook Ron awake, pointing at the new scar, rushing through his theory, desperate that Ron would disprove it. Luckily, he did, scoffing at the idea that Harry Potter, The Boy Who Lived To Worry, could be fated for a Death Eater. He dragged Harry Downstairs, to show him the scar on his mum’s leg that looked exactly the same—from a deep bruise, he said, that his Dad had gotten from crashing a bike. Burst blood vessels left a slight scar for a while. Or, Molly said, it could be a different kind of burn, a scalding. She had spilled pasta water on herself—years ago, she hastens to add, when she didn’t make it from scratch yet—and the burn looked like that for a while, especially with the basic healing she had done. No need to go to St. Mungo’s.

But it was sixth year, standing in Moaning Myrtle’s bathroom, that he finally understood. He watched cuts open on Draco Malfoy’s chest, blood pouring out of him and painting the floor a lurid crimson, and felt deep lines, stretching themselves and changing the way he held himself, carving onto his chest.

 

Because it was 4 months into Draco’s life when Narcissa Malfoy looked down on her son in his intricately carved ivory crib and noticed a new scar, lightning shaped, on his forehead. Lucius Malfoy who, hours later, returning from a Death Eater meeting of panic and quick alliances and even quicker betrayals, took one look at his infant son and cast a very specific flaying charm. Narcissa again, this time with essence of dittany, trying to make the circular, darkened skin on her son’s forehead look like anything else than what it was, a desperate, violent coverup made by a desperate, violent man.

It was when he was 8 that a small line appeared on his stomach, precise, almost invisible. It wasn’t noticed until a Healer gave Draco a checkup, saw the line, and looked at Narcissa in surprise that was just short of gleeful. A Muggleborn, with a troublesome appendix? What else would leave such a mark? He was soon Obliviated and sent on his way.

It was shortly before his first year at Hogwarts that Draco’s father pulled him aside and, with a sweep of his wand, changed his hair from a poor imitation of Lucius’s own to a flat, severe style that covered the boy’s forehead. Keep it like that, said Lucius. It covers up your failure, your corruption. Our downfall.

It was his fourth year, watching isn’t-he-a-hero Potter go up against a dragon successfully, damn him, when he went back to his dorm and peeled off his gloves to find a pattern of burn scars, not that different from those his father had left on his arms, on his hands. Fleur Delacoeur, he claimed when people questioned him. Foreign, of course, but rather pretty, wasn’t she? He let people doubt that story, though. More likely some girl not yet in Hogwarts, helping her mother make dinner as all girls should learn. Please let it be Diggory, or Krum, he thought when he had his thoughts to himself. And sure, it probably was.

It was his fifth year when he glanced down at his hand, free from burn scars now, and saw something silvery flash back at him. Turning his hand this way and that, he could almost make out… there. Words. Well, his mystery soulmate could try not to tell lies as much as they wanted, but it was Draco’s life now. Lie to Umbridge to make her like him. Lie to his friends in order to lead them. Lie to his parents to make them think him blindly loyal, forever theirs. Lie to the Dark Lord that he was not scared, yes, he wanted power, yes, he wanted to serve. Lie to himself that he would not end up dead in the end.

Lie to Harry Potter to keep up the charade. Tell him you pity him, tell him you hate him, tell him he’ll never win. Hope that he will. Hope that somehow, he’ll save your mother in time. You cannot be saved, not anymore.

But it was in his sixth year, scarred beyond all belief, that he truly understood something he had understood for a while now. He understood why Harry (and when had he stopped being Potter?) was looking at him with wide eyes, putting a hand to his chest as if to hold something in. Then Snape was there, kneeling in the puddle of blood that was his, wasn’t it, and telling Harry to stay and wait, and all Draco wanted was for Harry to go, to escape. To get away from all this. At least one of them could make it.

Harry looked at Draco, standing on the top of the Astronomy Tower, wand pointed at Albus Dumbledore, and wondered if you could scar your soul. He looked at Draco, lowering his wand, and wondered if you could change it.

Draco looked at Harry, face blown out of proportion, kneeling in front of him in Malfoy Manor. As Bellatrix leaned over him, leering, demanding he identify the boy, all Draco could think of were the silvery words that still appeared on his hand in the right light and the boy that had sliced them into his skin, and he continued to tell lies. He saw the green eyes in front of him widen slightly at his answer, then flick upwards to that slightly darker patch on his forehead, or was that his imagination?

Finally, they looked at each other, through a blaze of heat and smoke, beasts of Fiendfyre erupting all around them. Harry stretched his hand out toward Draco, who was soon to be eaten alive by a fire he had been feeding for years and had forgotten to pen in. Draco saw the hand, saw a flash of silver writing, and decided to try telling truths for a while. He grabbed on and was flung onto the back of a broom, Weasley yelling something behind them as he swung down for Goyle. Wrapping his hands around Harry, he held on for his life.

Lying in the Forbidden Forest, Narcissa leaning down toward him, Harry considered her question only for a moment. Feeling the phantom pain of all the scars he was carrying, he decided that if this was a lie, it was one he wanted to be true. He whispered yes, Draco was alive, yes, he could be saved, yes, he will be ok. No, you have not failed him. Not yet.

Months after the war, months of trials and executions and funerals, Draco opened the door to his family’s new 2 bedroom house in the country to find him standing there. Harry reached out a hand and Draco, anticipating his movement, brushed back the hair from his forehead to show the mottled skin there. But Harry, though he quirked his lips a bit, had seen enough lightning scars in his life. Instead, he reached for Draco’s sleeve, pushing it past the horrible Dark Mark to his shoulder, and put his index finger gently on one of Draco’s small, circular burn marks.

“Scars heal.”


End file.
